Charlize Theron Finally Speaks Out About Her Failed Romance With Sean Penn, Says She Didn’t ‘Ghost’ Him

Charlize is no Casper! In a candid new interview with WSJ magazine, Charlize Theron opened up for the first time about her failed romance with actor Sean Penn. When the pair split over the summer, there were rumors going around that she had “ghosted” the Oscar winner – meaning she’d simply stopped responding to his calls.

“There is a need to sensationalize things,” she told the mag (via E!). “When you leave a relationship there has to be some f**king crazy story or some crazy drama. And the f**king ghosting thing, like literally, I still don’t even know what it is. It’s just its own beast.”

But Theron insists that the split was much less dramatic than some assumed.

“We were in a relationship and then it didn’t work anymore. And we both decided to separate. That’s it,” she said.

She didn’t clarify exactly what it was in their romance that didn’t “work,” but the Mad Max: Fury Road star, 40, also noted that despite their engagement, the former pair weren’t as linked as some thought.

“We were very, very new in a relationship. The stories that Sean was going to adopt Jackson, and all of that was not true,” Theron said of her 3-year-old son. “It’s not something that happens in 18 months. You can’t do that to a child.”

Theron adopted her daughter, August, shortly after her split, but noted that Penn wasn’t a part of that process even when they were together.

“We had a very clear understanding,” she said of Penn. “He knew that I was thinking about filing for another adoption, but that we weren’t filing together.”

Penn, she noted, was good at handling boundaries with little Jackson throughout their relationship.

“There was an understanding that I was a single mom with a very young boy who I had to put in a situation where he understood that Mommy dates, but that he does not have a father,” she said.

“You have to be very careful and very honest about that stuff. And Sean was great with all of that.”